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1842–PRESENT · TESTED FOR THIS GROUND; BOUNDARY-TOLD AS THE COUNTY'S, ORDER BY ORDER
Each order as its own institution, tested for this ground first: no lodge of any order below is seated inside the Granger CDP in Howard, in Farr's 1883 directory, in the orders' own locators or in the federal tax record reached — the run is therefore the county's, told at the boundary the audit set, with each order's number and founding as the record gives them. The Masons are the county's oldest order on paper: Farr's South Bend City Directory for 1883 lists St. Joseph Lodge No. 45 (instituted 1842), South Bend Lodge No. 294 (instituted 1863) and Germania Lodge No. 301 (instituted 1862), with South Bend Chapter No. 29, Royal Arch Masons (instituted 1855), all meeting at Masonic Hall, 118–120 South Michigan Street. Howard in 1907 finds them in the new Masonic Temple at Michigan and La Salle — the three lodges, the chapter, South Bend Commandery No. 13, Knights Templar, and Order of Eastern Star Chapter No. 2 — and the order's modern county life includes Council Oak Lodge No. 745, chartered 1966, at 19780 Brick Road. The Odd Fellows meet in 1907 in the Odd Fellows Hall at Main and Washington, which Howard calls the oldest fraternal building in the city: South Bend Lodge No. 29, I.O.O.F. — Farr gives its institution as 1846, meeting Wednesdays at the order's hall on West Washington Street — with South Bend Encampment No. 9, Canton South Bend No. 9, and Schuyler Rebekah Lodge No. 29, the Rebekahs owing their origin to Schuyler Colfax himself; beyond the hall, Robert Blum Lodge No. 278 and Helena Rebekah Lodge No. 72 complete Howard's list. The Elks are South Bend Lodge No. 235, B.P.O.E., which Howard finds in 1907 in its new Elks' Temple on West Colfax Avenue, opposite the Commercial-Athletic building, meeting Mondays; the lodge's present seat is 3535 McKinley Avenue. Its founding year is not verified in the open record reached — the 1951 date in its federal tax profile is an IRS ruling date, not a charter, and prints as neither here. The Eagles stand in Howard's census with their officers named and meeting Wednesdays — and with no aerie number given, an omission this article prints rather than repairs from silence: the number the order's current record carries for South Bend is Aerie No. 435, seated today at 61601 South Ironwood Road. The Moose are Lodge No. 58 in the order's current record, seated at 4443 White Feather Drive in South Bend; the 1935 date in its tax profile is likewise a ruling date and is printed as nothing more. The Knights of Columbus are Santa Maria Council No. 553 — chartered 6 January 1901 on the council's own newsletter masthead, meeting in Howard's census on the first and third Wednesdays, and seated today at 1400 East Angela Boulevard. The Catholic benefit societies, the census's confessional wing, stand in Howard entire: the Catholic Order of Foresters' St. Edward Court No. 1424; the Independent Order of Foresters' Court St. Joseph No. 1576; the Catholic Knights of America's St. Paul's Branch No. 408 (founded September 1885) and St. Boniface Branch No. 701, with St. Mary's Commandery of its Uniform Rank; the Ancient Order of Hibernians' Division No. 1 (founded January 1885); and over them all the St. Joseph County Federation of Catholic Societies. Around these seven the census fills with the era's smaller orders — Knights of Pythias (Crusade Lodge No. 14), the Tribe of Ben Hur, the Maccabees in two rival orders, the Red Men, the Woodmen — each counted in the census article above. The run's verdict is its first sentence, and it is a finding, not a shrug: the great age of the lodge built temples, halls and temples again in South Bend, and in the farm townships north of the river it built nothing that any record reached can name.
From Howard (1907), societies chapter, pp. 461–463 (the halls, numbers, meeting days and officers as printed there); Farr's City Directory of South Bend, vol. X (1883) — the Masonic and Odd Fellows institutions and dates; the Knights of Columbus Santa Maria Council 553's own newsletter masthead (the 6 January 1901 charter); the orders' current locator and seat records (Elks No. 235, Aerie No. 435, Moose No. 58, Council Oak Lodge No. 745); the federal tax profiles for the Elks and Moose, whose ruling dates are labeled as such in the text and never as foundings. The CDP test: Howard, Farr, the locators and the tax record, November 2026.